[ILUG] Linux for a 386?

[Wynne, Conor]

Yo,

I installed smoothwall 0.98 on the p75 there last night, its faster to
re-install than to try patching or upgrading... strange. but anyway, it took
all of 15 minutes. + 5 mins to remember the syntax for dd coz I no longer
possess a windozs box. Woohoo! 

Anyway, drive speed is critical - aswell as memory, but the p75 is SERIOUSLY
slower to respond than the p200. Processor speed is irrelevant to a
firewall, ok almost irrelevant. Squid is more disk i/o and memory intensive
than anything else. And granted the p200 has/had 128??? as far as I can
reemember but it changes all the time so I dunno. 

4 MEG, I think smoothwall requires 16MB so you may be stuck there. 0.98 uses
kernel 2.2.18-IPsec. I choose NOT to use the p75 as a proxy in this case as
the performance will suck. But as a firewall/gateway only solution its
grand. 

Try to install it. You never know. 

p.s.: blowing into the floppy drive is cheaper than replacement. I only
possess 1 floppy between 4 machines (and an LS-120) How often do you need
it? Rarely if ever in my case. But I'm a cheap bastard :)

CW


This is potentially a big problem.  If memory serves, Smoothwall is
based on RH 6.0 / kernel 2.2.18, which is somewhere between difficult
and impossible to install with that little RAM.  Even Slackware, these
days, is difficult without more.

The Smoothwall docs don't say much about hardware requirements, but I
can guarantee that 4 MB is pushing it.  Additionally, Smoothwall
implements IPSEC (and SSH?), and so will use both extra RAM and floating
point math functions for crypto:  Your 386 probably lacks a math chip,
and so has to handle that through software emulation.

> I'll try cleaning the floppy drive, or replacing it - but I really
> want to just have it running as a gateway. would it work if i pt the
> hd into the P3 i have, and install smoothwall on that, then transfer
> the hd back?

That might work.

Cleaning floppy drives is somewhat difficult to justify, economically,
given the low replacement cost.

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